HIGH-LEVERAGE PRACTICES IN General Education and Resource CLASSROOMS

You’re Not Alone: Collaborating with Specialists for Student Success

Episode Description

In this episode, Heather and Candace talk about what true collaboration looks like in schools—not just checking boxes, but building partnerships that actually move the needle for kids. Candace shares her experiences working with general educators, paraprofessionals, specialists, and families, and what happens when we show up to help, not to compete. They explore the power of both behind-the-scenes teamwork and visible, in-the-moment collaboration that students can see and learn from. This conversation is full of real talk about staying student-centered, navigating tough meetings, and finding small ways to build trust across roles—even when the work is messy.

Key Points and Takeaways

  • Understand and leverage the unique skills of each team member to meet the diverse needs of students.
  • Value both types of collaboration for teaching students to ask for help and rely on a support network.
  • Employ verbal and non-verbal active listening and open-ended questioning to foster a collaborative environment.
  • School administrators play a crucial role in structuring collaboration time and supporting co-teaching and paraprofessional efforts.
  • Effective collaboration avoids unproductive venting and rigid rule-setting that excludes the input of diverse perspectives.
Podcast Guest

Candace McCoy, RBT

Candace McCoy is a school-based behavior technician and assistant organizational development specialist specializing in social, emotional, and behavioral challenges experienced by preteen and adolescent student populations as well as organizational behavior management. She has been a restaurant manager, travel agent, bartender, and paraprofessional in the private and public sectors. Outside of her professional work, she enjoys traveling and spending time with her family of young men. Candace is a Registered Behavior Technician with college 
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High-Leverage Practice #1:
Collaborate with professionals to increase student success.
Collaboration with general education teachers, paraprofessionals, and support staff is necessary to support students learning toward measurable outcomes and to facilitate students' social and emotional well being across all school environments and instructional settings, like co taught. Collaboration with individuals or teams requires the use of effective collaboration behaviors like sharing ideas, active listening, questioning, planning, problem solving, and negotiating to develop and adjust instructional or behavioral plans based on student data and the coordination of expectations, responsibilities, and resources to maximize student learning.
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Public collaboration teaches kids that it's okay to ask for help and not be good at everything.

Candace McCoy

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Host: Heather Volchko

Guest: Candace McCoy

For this high leverage practice, or HLP, we are talking about collaborating with professionals to increase student success. This week I've got Candace with us, and she does so much collaborating with so many different kinds of people, and I'm beyond thankful for the focus on the student outcome that she has, and I'm excited to see where we take this conversation. So, Candace, when we were talking about collaborating with professionals, that's one thing, but having those collaborations focused on increasing that student success, that's another layer. So for this high leverage practice, what does this mean for you?

Well, first of all, I like to pay attention to who's around me and who's available. Our students are complex people and so I can't meet every need that they have. I don't have the knowledge to even address every need that they have. So I think step one is paying attention to the resources that you have around you. When you notice that another teacher is really good at “X” and you're not so much, then that's where you want to make sure that you're turning to get the help for that student. Because in the end, the goal is that the student would advance in that discipline or that modality. So you want to make sure that you're recognizing the talent that you're surrounded with and realizing that they're there for the same reason. And that reason is the success of the students.

That's something you're so good at. Like, you see what other people have skills and strengths in and you're not afraid to bring all of those different voices to the table and make it make sense in a way that is still good for the kid ultimately at the end of the day, It’s just a massive strength of yours to be able to even see that in each other.

Yeah, it's important, I think, because while I am great at a lot of things, I'm also terrible at other things. And I will use math as an example. I am terrible at math, and so I might be working with a student and we're working on social studies and it's going fabulous. And then we switch over to math, and I am paralyzed because I'm useless at even basic math. But the para in the room is really good at math.

And so that's when I draw them in, and it really accomplishes two goals. I've got somebody who's good at math, so they're helping with the math, but it's also helping our students get used to somebody other than us so that we are not the end all, be all for them. We're not their only crutch. They recognize that there's a group of people around them to help them. So I think there's private collaboration where all the adults get together and they collaborate. But there's also a real value in public collaboration, teaching those kids it's okay to ask for help, that it's okay to not be good at everything, that it's okay to trust another adult that you may not be used to trusting.

So I think that public collaboration is super important.

I love that you're bringing that in because the other half of this episode, so much of what the high leverage practice, like kind of research and all the rhetoric around it is, it's those private meetings, right? So if it's instructional meetings or IEP meetings or any of those more adult to adult interactions that are those closed door conversations where decisions are made on behalf of kids and you're talking about there are a lot of times in the day to day experience that there are decisions being made on behalf of or around kids that they can also see.

And I love how you're saying, hey, all of the same things, if we were to talk how to have a productive or effective IEP meeting, how do we team well together to make sure that we're making good decisions, all that stuff still applies. And I love that you're saying, like, you're just basically opening the door on that where you're unveiling the curtain, kind of whatever analogy you want to throw on it, saying, hey, kids, watch that.

And then they get to see how adults interact, and then they take that and they'll replicate that. Or then they're seeing like, oh, that means I can work with this person this way and that person that way, which is also a huge skill to learn. You know, I'm not going to go to one person for everything, and not everybody is everything, right? And that means that I as a person, can also have strengths and weaknesses because I get to just see that on display. I love that you're bringing that up.

Yeah, I think that one is so important, and it's not that the flip side of it, the adult collaboration outside of the students isn't important because that is as well. I think it's incredibly important to sit down in a room full of people, whether that be an IEP meeting or something like that, and discuss the students strengths and weaknesses and how we can help them to move forward and overcome some of the challenges that they're having.

That's super important, and that helps us recognize what resources are there and what direction to send our students as they need something that maybe we can't handle. So knowing that the social worker is really good at dealing with attachment disorders, that's the social worker that I want to spend some time with the kid that I'm working with because that's the struggle that they're having. Or the school nurse is really empathetic with medications or even physical things that maybe diabetes or something like that, that a kid is dealing with.

I want to tap into that resource because that's where they're going to feel safe to be themselves. I don't think you always know that if you don't sit down and discuss things amongst adults.

Well, so let's talk about those, those moments of collaboration. What counts as collaborating with that student success goal in mind?

I think, first of all, meeting together with the same goal. The goal is the success of the student. So we're not looking to be right. We're looking to be helpful, and we're looking to lean on each other and know that everybody's a little bit right. I think oftentimes adults get into a classroom or into a meeting situation and they just can't be wrong. They have to be right. They have to know the answers. They have to be. You know, we just kind of start to learn that we want to be the smartest person in the room. And if you believe, if you enter into a meeting knowing that you're not, not on every subject, and recognize the wealth of information that you have around you, that's when you're truly going to see success because you're leaning on each other instead of competing with each other.

And nobody succeeds when we compete, but when we work together, I feel like the student and the staff succeeds.

That's so good. The other half of this episode is going to walk through so many more details and how do you set up a meeting and how do you all whatever, and you're just like, just show up humble, like open minded. The rest of it. It's whatever, it's details. It'll figure itself out. But if you show up open minded and with that understanding that, yes, you have something to offer, but so does everyone else, and together collectively, like, that's your ideal outcome.

Yeah, that covers basically everything. So I guess to reverse that, then what would it not be? I feel like a lot of times I get pulled into rooms and we're supposedly having this collaboration, and it's really maybe not collaborative, or maybe it doesn't have the kids best interest in kind of the heart of that conversation. So what would make some form of collaboration really not an example of this high leverage practice?

Well, specifically in some of the meetings that I've attended for the kiddos that I work with, which tends to be more of the emotional behavior, some would call difficult kids, I don't agree with that, but I think that there's a level of venting that can occur in these meetings, which basically is just complaining. And when we start to do that and we start to honor it in other people and encourage it, it brings down the whole room and it accomplishes zero goal, except for making everybody more angry at that student for what they did to you, that upset you.

You know, I think just accentuating the positive, not that those negative things don't exist, and there are situations and things that we need to talk about, but talking about them with the goal of a positive outcome instead of the goal of just complaining. And I think we all fall into that trap sometimes. Just being human, that tends to happen. I know that I've had situations where I've had to have a quick mind shift because I realized I was going that direction, and there's nothing productive about that.

I also think those meetings that are just rules, like just outcomes, not decisions. Oftentimes we get in those meetings where this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it, and that's the end of the conversation. There really isn't a conversation there. That's just you're being told how things are going to be, and those have their value as well, but that would not be collaboration.

We're not hearing all the opinions in the room. We're not taking into consideration different situations. We're simply being told the way that it is. I don't think that's collaboration either.

Well said. I could not agree more on that. So, like I said at the beginning of this conversation, you have done some beautiful collaboration with family members, with general education teachers, with special education teachers, paraprofessionals administrators, dean specialists, all of them. You've done a lot of collaboration and kind of crossing the streams amongst everyone in their own spaces and their expertise and honing it into what's good for kids.

So I'm curious for you, since you're living in the middle of this and you're doing it, like, what are your tips and tricks? Like, what are some of those stories where you're like, oh, man, we started doing this. I didn't think it was going to work, but then it was cool, cause this collaboration actually worked.

I generally just start off in any situation trying to be the helper. How can I help the student that I'm working with? How can I help the teacher in the classroom? How can I help the students around us? How can I be an asset to where I am right now and help the most people? And I think that's always the beginning of collaboration. I have been met with hostility in a lot of gen ed classrooms initially, because normally the student that I'm accompanying creates feelings of hostility, and then I come along with them, and maybe I'm not fixing the problem right away. Those situations are still occurring even though I'm there.

And so sometimes there is a little bit of hostility, but I think, you know, it takes a little time and a thick skin and being the helper in the classroom. So I'm helping my student, but I'm also helping those around. I'm also reinforcing what the teacher is saying. I'm also encouraging productivity, not just out of my student, but everybody around me meeting the same goal that the teacher has. So I think that's always the beginning. And then I will find that those teachers will come to me for things like, hey, I know you're here for Bobby, but I'm having this trouble with Jane, and I'm not exactly sure how to do it, how to handle this.

What would you recommend? And now I'm starting to see a collaboration between the two of us, and I'm able to say, well, here's what I would do in that situation. I got Bobby to do a few sentences on his homework. What would you recommend for me to push that forward a little bit more? How much more would you like to see him do? I want to see if we can get there and meet where you want us to be. And all of a sudden, I see a beautiful collaboration opening between the two of us.

And now I walk into the building, and they smile at me, and they're happy to see me. So, yeah, I think just being the helper, helping people realize that you're there to help, will make them more willing to help you, and you'll start to see what pools you have to draw from.

Yeah, that's the exact same framing that I take when I walk into those maybe more high stakes meeting table meetings, too, right? Where that closed door conversation, and there're really big decisions that are coming out of those conversations. Positioning myself as the helper to say, hey, I'm here to just make sure that we are doing right by the kid. How can we support this student? And, yes, consequences apply. Yes. All of these things that need to get done.

Yes. But are we doing that in the framing that this kid is actually going to be better for it? Like, can we actually see progress and growth and change come out of them? Likewise, I do tend to be sitting at those tables where the kids are wreaking all kinds of havoc, and I have definitely burned a lot of bridges along the way. And so adults are not necessarily endeared to trying to find things that work or trying another thing where it feels like they've just tried everything and nothing's working. And so the collaboration is, now we've done that, we've given up. This is the kid is the issue.

It's taking that and shifting it to say, okay, I hear that. How can I be helpful? And then acknowledging what every other person at the table has that they can actually be using to be helpful. That isn't a massive thing that would take up more time and energy and effort and all of that. It's stuff that they're already doing that we can just try to leverage in a different way with the kid.

And that's what you're talking about, too. In the classroom or at the meeting table, it's, can we show up as a helper? Because with that mindset, then sometimes we can even take those fairly negative conversations and adjust it to truly be collaborative on behalf of that kid. Well, awesome. Thank you so much for taking some time to share your expertise with me. Like I said, you were in the middle of these collaborations all the time and all the directions with all the people, so I'm so thankful that you kicked this one off with me. Thanks.

You're welcome. Thank you.

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The goal is not to be right but to be helpful, focusing on the success of the student.

Candace McCoy

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Imagine walking into a classroom where every student’s unique needs are not just acknowledged but actively met through a web of strategic collaboration. Effective special education teachers are the architects of this environment, bringing together a diverse team of professionals, families, and caregivers. Their mission? To design and implement educational programs that truly cater to each student with a disability.


The magic of collaboration lies in its ability to pool varied expertise and perspectives. When teachers, therapists, counselors, and parents come together, they create a richer, more comprehensive understanding of a student’s needs. This synergy translates into more effective planning and delivery of instruction and services.


Communication is key here. Special educators excel in using respectful and effective communication skills, always mindful of the backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, cultures, and languages of the families and professionals they work with. This cultural competence ensures that every voice is heard and valued.


When we talk about collaborative activities, we're focusing on two main goals: designing each student’s instructional program to achieve specific outcomes and meticulously collecting data to monitor progress. This isn't just about ticking boxes; it's about making real, impactful changes in a student's educational journey.


District and school leaders play a pivotal role in this process. They need to champion collaboration by providing professional learning opportunities, fostering a collective commitment, and creating schedules that allow for regular, meaningful interactions. Whether it’s through IEP teams, co-teaching arrangements, or partnerships between teachers and paraprofessionals, structured collaboration time is essential.


In special education, collaboration is the bedrock for achieving a multitude of goals. It helps determine eligibility for services, supports instruction, ensures paraprofessional support, and resolves both student and programmatic issues. Think of collaboration not as an end but as a vibrant culture—a means through which any educational goal can be attained.


This culture of collaboration is nurtured by providing opportunities for face-to-face meetings, fostering positive professional relationships, and establishing clear procedures for working together. While the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) might not explicitly mandate collaboration, the spirit of the law and best practices within schools heavily imply that it’s through collaboration that we achieve the most effective education for students with disabilities.


When we define collaboration, it goes beyond simply “working together.” It’s about how individuals share their work, characterized by voluntariness, mutual goals, parity, shared decision-making, joint accountability, and shared resources. Over time, as trust builds and a sense of professional community develops, collaboration becomes even more effective.


Despite its somewhat elusive nature, research shows that collaboration is indispensable in special education. It’s this collective effort that ensures we’re not just meeting compliance standards but genuinely transforming the educational experiences of students with disabilities.


Professionals working in schools can easily assume that collaboration is occurring simply because teachers and staff regularly see and talk to each other. However, mere interaction does not equate to true collaboration. Genuine collaboration requires intention, effort, and skill, leading to positive outcomes for all parties involved, particularly students with disabilities and those who struggle. High-Leverage Practice 1 (or HLP 1) is crucial because it is utilized daily, regardless of grade level, content area, or students' disability status. A special educator who collaborates effectively with colleagues is well-positioned to also collaborate with families (HLP 3) and conduct effective meetings to determine and implement quality programming (HLP 2). Furthermore, collaboration is vital for implementing almost all social/behavioral and instructional HLPs. This is the first HLP for very good reasons.


Teachers Who Effectively Collaborate with Other Professionals demonstrate effective communication skills through co-teaching and working with paraprofessionals as well as following interaction procedures.


  • Demonstrate communication skills

    When we talk about teachers who excel in collaboration, we're really looking at a set of refined communication skills that set them apart. First, let's dive into verbal active listening—this is where paraphrasing comes into play. By repeating back what a colleague has said, teachers show they truly understand and value the input.


Then there's nonverbal active listening. Think about how powerful a nod or a thoughtful facial expression can be. These cues can make a world of difference in making someone feel heard and appreciated.


Next up is the art of open-ended questioning. This technique encourages active participation and helps draw out valuable insights from other professionals. It's not about getting a yes or no answer but about opening up a dialogue that leads to richer, more productive conversations.


Another crucial aspect is the use of accurate and descriptive statements. Instead of being vague or overly evaluative, effective communicators provide clear and precise feedback, which helps keep everyone on the same page.


Finally, it's the careful blending of all these communication skills that truly fosters strong partnerships among professionals. When teachers master this blend, they create a collaborative environment where everyone feels valued and engaged, leading to better outcomes for students.

  • Co-Teaching & Working with Paraprofessionals

    When it comes to effective collaboration, especially in co-teaching and working with paraprofessionals, there are several key elements that successful teachers embody.


First and foremost, co-teaching partners must have a strong commitment to their shared work. This isn't just a job; it's a partnership that requires dedication and a unified vision. Regular communication and planning are essential components. Co-teachers need to be in constant dialogue, ensuring that they are always on the same page and able to adapt their strategies as needed.


Sharing resources, decision-making, and accountability is another cornerstone of effective collaboration. Co-teachers must be willing to pool their materials and expertise, make joint decisions, and take collective responsibility for their students' successes and challenges.


Moreover, effective co-teaching involves planning for and using a variety of approaches to meet students' diverse needs. This might include different instructional strategies and flexible grouping, always with the goal of providing the best possible learning environment for every student.


Clearly establishing and agreeing upon roles and responsibilities is crucial. Whether it's between co-teaching partners or involving paraprofessionals, everyone needs to know their specific duties and how they contribute to the overall plan. This clarity prevents confusion and ensures that all team members can work together seamlessly.


By fostering strong commitments, maintaining open lines of communication, sharing resources and responsibilities, and planning strategically, teachers can create a collaborative environment that significantly enhances student learning.

  • Follow Interaction Processes

    When we are managing conflicts or disagreements, it’s all about following a structured approach.


It’s crucial to adhere to the steps of shared problem-solving. This means tackling conflicts systematically, with a clear process that helps all parties work through their differences constructively.


Leaning on student data is vital. Data isn’t just numbers—it's evidence that can support different viewpoints and help resolve disagreements. By focusing on what the data tells us about student needs and outcomes, we can ground our discussions in objective information.


Sometimes, despite our best efforts, reaching an agreement can be challenging. In these cases, seeking additional help from school leaders can be a game changer. Leaders can facilitate further discussions, offer fresh perspectives, and help mediate solutions that might not be immediately apparent.


In essence, effective collaboration isn’t just about working together; it’s about using a structured approach to navigate conflicts, relying on data for objective support, and knowing when to involve leaders to ensure a positive outcome.


School leaders can support teachers by ensuring there is sufficient common time allocated for team planning and co-planning. They should communicate that co-teachers and other collaborators are equally valuable and expected to contribute equally to planning and instruction. When creating the school master schedule, it is important to consider the needs of co-teaching. Leaders should also support all professionals in implementing specially designed instruction and supports as noted in IEPs. Setting up data systems to guide teachers’ work and communicate shared accountability in using and maintaining these systems is crucial. Additionally, leaders should proactively monitor collaborators’ communication and planning, providing guidance as needed to help foster positive communication and planning efforts.


Collaboration is a concept that seems naturally appealing—who wouldn't want professionals working together to benefit students? However, studying collaboration rigorously is an entirely different ballgame. It's extraordinarily challenging to pin down with empirical research.


While there is some evidence to support the effectiveness of collaboration, much of it comes from case studies, program evaluations, and qualitative research. These sources provide valuable insights, but they don't offer the robust, empirical evidence that many practitioners look for when assessing the quality of collaboration.


Currently, we have limited rigorous empirical evidence to guide us on the specific criteria for evaluating the quality of collaboration. We also lack definitive proof that collaboration directly and positively impacts outcomes for students with disabilities. This doesn't mean collaboration isn't effective—it just means that proving its effectiveness with hard data is more complex than it might initially seem.

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